Being [in] the center: Sexual citizenship and ... · Being [in] the center: Sexual citizenship and homonationalism at Tel Aviv’s Gay-Center1 In a demonstration protesting against

Article

Being [in] the center:Sexual citizenship andhomonationalism atTel Aviv’s Gay-Center

Gilly HartalBar Ilan University, Israel

Orna Sasson-LevyBar Ilan University, Israel

Abstract

Tel Aviv’s Gay-Center is unique in Israel for being sponsored, managed and controlled

by the municipality. This article focuses on the Gay-Center as a material, symbolic and

discursive space in order to clarify the relationship between LGBT individuals and the

nation. Based on an ethnographic study, we show that since its establishment the Gay-

Center has undergone centralization processes as a result of being located in central Tel

Aviv and by striving for LGBT mainstreaming, thereby accelerating the achievement of

sexual citizenship and urban belonging. However, the expansion of sexual citizenship,

which is always based on processes of inclusion and exclusion, reveals homonational

practices and homonormative discourses. Since being in the city is the easiest and, at

times, the only way to earn sexual citizenship, we argue that LGBT urban citizenship is

an indication, a marker and thus a prerequisite of homonationalism.

Keywords

Homonationalism, LGBT in Israel, sexual citizenship, spatial politics, urban belonging

Being [in] the center: Sexual citizenship andhomonationalism at Tel Aviv’s Gay-Center1

In a demonstration protesting against the national-religious party’s (HabayitHayehudi) veto of pro-lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) legislation,

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Gilly Hartal, Gender Studies Program, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 5290002, Israel.

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Reut Guy, a leading LGBT activist working with marginal LGBT youth, said inher speech:

In recent years our community has become so varied, there are so many voices and so

many colors . . .we thought it would be right to go back and join forces, and establish

the LGBT task force that we formed this week, eight serious (women) social activists,

each one and her issues, you know that lesbians love to fight for a cause [. . .]

This week we had the first meeting of the task force, around 80 people came, and every

one of them said they wanted to help, and suddenly we saw that there were in the

room parliamentary aides, ministers’ aides, parliament members, all of them from the

community, gays, lesbians, which is to say that they are not all straights out there, it is

us, we just need to make the knowledge that we have accumulated accessible to the

community, to share that knowledge, to cooperate.

[. . .] We pledge that one piece of legislation will not come at the expense of another

community, we pledge to examine the proposed legislation and if we need to support it

then we will not be embarrassed to do so, and if we need to object we also won’t be

embarrassed to do so [. . .]. We do not share the thought that now is a time of crisis. It

is not a time of crisis, it is a good time, it is a good government in that we have a

window of opportunity to pass legislation that is good for us.

Although it was a cold and stormy night, more than 1000 people participated in thedemonstration, which, as is clear from Reut’s words, protested against the currentgovernment, while simultaneously highlighting the LGBT community’s confidence init. This new confidence in the government’s willingness and ability to promote pro-LGBT legislation derives from two parallel processes of change. On the politicallevel, the current government (elected in 2013) is exceptional since it does not includeultra-Orthodox parties in the coalition and thus offers new opportunities for sexualand gender equality legislation (which heretofore had been achieved mostly via courtappeal). On the social level, over the last three decades the LGBT community inIsrael has matured, achieved legal recognition, developed a network of self-help,social, and political organizations, while conducting annual pride events in majorcities. This process can be interpreted through ‘the new homonormativity’ (Duggan,2003: 50), a politics that does not oppose heteronormative assumptions and mani-festations (patriarchy, liberal establishment, etc.). Homonormative facets of theLGBT community, which are especially apparent in Tel Aviv, are reflected in theestablishment of the Gay-Center (Ha-Merkaz Ha-Ge’e) in the heart of the city, whichsymbolizes, maintains and reproduces the community’s social and political power.

This article focuses on the Gay-Center, established in 2008 and funded by theTel Aviv Municipality. We probe how the center, its practices and its meaningsreflect ‘the relationship between the state, capitalism, and sexuality’ (Puar, 2013:337) in Israel and examine what kind of politics is manifested at the Gay-Center.More particularly, we explore the production and achievement of sexual citizenship

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by analyzing the spatial inclusion and exclusion practices and the Gay-Center’sfunctioning as a homonational space and its implications.

We refer to space as both a place (a territory) and an indicator of power relations,a site of unequal interactions. Elden argues that space ‘is about interaction, deter-mination, and control’ (2009: 267); therefore, space is about power and power isabout space. The study looks at the Gay-Center as an urban space, an actual place,as well as a performance of power relations. As Probyn concludes, ‘space is a press-ing matter, and it matters which bodies, where and how, press against it’ (1995: 81).

In Hebrew, the word Merkaz is used to signify both the mainstream and thecenter. In this paper we use the term centralization as a signifier of this conflationbetween processes of institutionalization, normalization and mainstreaming.Centralization thus constitutes a spatial formation of assimilation and integrationinto the mainstream. Consequently, not only does Tel Aviv’s Gay-Center representa place in the center, it also symbolizes the mainstreaming of the LGBT communityand the homonational processes occurring within it.

We argue that inclusion and exclusion processes, which are at the foundation ofsexual citizenship, reveal homonational and homonormative discourses based onmunicipal symbolic, spatial and material control. The Gay-Center, which is alocation-space that bolsters a fantasy about being in the center, i.e. a fantasy ofbecoming part of the national hegemony, sets normative boundaries of social/pol-itical belonging and imposes an explicit and implicit homonational discourse.

The paper opens with an analytic description of the field of LGBT activism inIsrael, which led to the establishment of the Gay-Center. Following a theoreticalreview of the concepts of sexual citizenship and homonationalism, we proceed toanalyze the LGBT centralization discourse. We explore inclusion and exclusionpractices and their implications for symbolic, spatial and performative boundaryconstruction for LGBT activists in order to analyze the production of homona-tionalism at Tel Aviv’s Gay-Center.

Tel Aviv – The formation of a gay heaven in the Middle East

The crystallization of Israeli LGBT activism can be traced to the establishment ofthe National Association of LGBT in Israel (better known as the Aguda, meaning‘the association’) in 1975, followed by the foundation of Alef (an acronym forLesbian-Feminist Organization) in 1978. These organizations struggled, first andforemost, against the law that criminalized homosexuality in Israel. New legislationin 1988 changed the political opportunity structure and enabled the emergence ofnew advocacy, support groups and social organizations in addition to ongoinglegal and political work, emphasizing a politics of assimilation (Kama, 2011).Four years later, amendments preventing discrimination on the basis of sexualorientation in the labor market were added to the law. Additional organizations,such as the Lesbian-Feminist Association and the Jerusalem Open House, wereestablished during the 1980s and 1990s.

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The turn of the century signified the emergence of radical anti-assimilationistand queer Israeli politics. This new politics integrated more discourses (transsexual,bisexual, queer, disability, economic, ethnic, nationalist, etc.) with an anti-occupation agenda (Ziv, 2010). Nevertheless, Kama (2011) argues that these radicalgroups and queer politics were of minor significance and did not influence main-stream gay-lesbian politics.

The continuation and growth of LGBT organizations and social movements andthe essential change in public opinion towards the LGBT community, followed bymany legal achievements, mark the last decade (Gross, 2010). For instance, in 2004,the Supreme Court ruled that a gay man can inherit his deceased spouse’s assets;since 2005, the state recognizes same-sex parental adoption of non-biological chil-dren; and in 2006, a Supreme Court verdict enabled the formal registration ofsame-sex marriages conducted abroad in the population registry. The foundationof the Gay-Center in downtown Tel Aviv is one of the most significant achieve-ments of this process.

Despite the fact that Tel Aviv, the largest urban area in Israel, does not have agay neighborhood, the city, like many other urban areas (Weston, 1995), is per-ceived as the natural and only home for the Israeli LGBT community. The TelAviv Gay-Center was founded in 2008 by the Tel Aviv Municipality via its financialinvestment. This process was mobilized by gay (Jewish) men, who were alreadyintegrated into mainstream municipal politics. They lobbied for the establishmentof the center and called for a municipal survey examining the needs of the localLGBT community and in particular the necessity of a local community LGBTcenter (see Pizmony-Levy, 2005). Therefore, the Gay-Center differs from otherpride centers around the world: it is not run by an LGBT organization or asocial movement but is sponsored and controlled by municipal leadership. AdiMoreno (2011) claims that by means of control of the physical space and deci-sion-making regarding the budget, the Gay-Center enables national and municipalregulation of the LGBT community space.

Home to several LGBT organizations, the center draws a heterogeneous mix ofactivists from a diverse range of ethnic, political, age and sexual backgrounds. Thecenter operates a commercial cafe at the entrance and runs community events,group activities, self-help gatherings, a health clinic, an information center, a the-ater and the local pride parade. The three-floor, 1000 square meter renovatedbuilding is located in downtown Tel Aviv, where real estate is very expensive, ina former municipal building inside a park. While 10% of the budget does comefrom municipal funding, the Gay-Center’s budget is mainly based on revenuesfrom its activities and donations (see Figure 1).

The first Israeli pride event took place in Tel Aviv in June 1998. Pride eventshave long been considered a major factor in the construction and presence ofLGBT identity, politics and social movements in public space (Gamson, 1995;Jenness, 2013). Since 1999, Tel Aviv pride events have been partly sponsored by

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the municipality and the Aguda was the organizer of the pride parade until 2006. In2007, due to inability to meet the high security costs, production was transferred tothe municipality and specifically to city council member Yaniv Weizman, who isalso the mayor’s advisor on issues relating to the LGBT community. Transferringthe responsibility for pride events to the municipality was a long and complicatedprocess, resulting, among other reasons, from the privatization of internal securityin Israel and capitalist pressures against public protest by burdening it with highcosts. As a result, since its establishment the Gay-Center and its administrationhave played a focal role in the organization of pride events and all organizingmeetings have been held there.

Nevertheless, the violence towards LGBT individuals has not stopped. In add-ition to ongoing harassment against LGBT individuals in the public sphere, twomajor incidents have occurred in the last decade: a man was stabbed during the2005 Jerusalem Pride Parade, and two people were killed and 14 injured in ashooting at the Bar-Noar, the youth meetings of the Aguda, in August 2009.Aeyal Gross (2010) argues that one of the paradoxical effects of these murders,which traumatized the Israeli LGBT community, was that it allowed politiciansfrom across the political spectrum to show their support for the mourning

Figure 1. Outside Tel Aviv Gay-Center (photograph: Adi Moreno).




community and it created opportunities to speak out for gay rights. This was surelya turning point, as Gross argues:

This change allowed the cementing of an unwritten deal that had long been in the

works, between Israeli established homonormative politics and the new Israeli homo-

nationalism. The mass rally in Tel Aviv a week after the murder, at which two senior

right-wing cabinet ministers spoke, was a significant moment in this process. Although

it did include critical and dissident voices, it also brought the homonormative and

homonationalist politics together as has never happened before and was thus crucial

for the ‘deal’. Its terms are that ‘we’ will be good, normative and Zionist gays, who are

willing to partake in the discourse of Israel as a liberal democracy and collaborate,

directly and indirectly, in the state’s use of gay rights as a fig leaf for Israeli democracy,

and in return we will get sympathy and some support from the state. (2010: para. 9)

Indeed, some of the Gay-Center’s declared aims are encouraging tourism, strengthen-ing the Jewish-Israeli heritage, commemorating the Holocaust and consolidating con-nections with the Jewish Diaspora. Consequently, the Gay-Center holds holidaycelebrations and memorial ceremonies in addition to hosting foreign delegations.

The ‘deal’ between the state and the LGBT community is vividly exemplified bystate encouragement of gay tourism. The Gay-Center partakes in the Gay-Tourismcampaign, which is a byproduct of the Brand Israel campaign, directed by theMinistry of Foreign Affairs, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Israeli Treasury.Launched in 2005, the campaign’s goal is to replace Israel’s image as a MiddleEastern, religious and militaristic desert state with an image of Israel as a moderncutting-edge Western liberal country (in particular in contrast to Palestine andother Arab countries).

In 2010 the Tel Aviv Municipality’s Department of Tourism, in conjunctionwith the Aguda, initiated ‘Tel Aviv Gay Vibe’, to promote European gay tourismto Israel, specifically to Tel Aviv.2 Most of the project’s funding originated from theTourism Ministry and the municipality. The substantial investment was perceived aspotentially lucrative and an indicator that gay issues are part of a strategy forchanging public opinion of Israel worldwide – otherwise known as ‘pinkwashing’.During the summer of 2012, approximately 25,000 gay tourists descended on thecity, spending about $50 million, a 20% increase over spending the previoussummer.3 The tourism project seems to be in some way recompense to the munici-pality for the Gay-Center, its budget and the tolerance it receives. Hence, LGBTindividuals are not only supposed to be grateful for their inclusion, they must giveback to the state by attracting gay tourists. Tourism integrates consumerism andmodern citizenship (Bell, 1995) and the gay tourism campaign added a whiff ofnationalism.

As the Gay-Center constitutes a mediator of municipal logics and practices, it isan illustration of a neoliberal process of private consumption that transforms bur-eaucratic positions into political capital, instilling municipal and national govern-mentality (Moreno, 2011). The Gay-Center is very influential in local LGBT

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politics. It sets normative boundaries of belonging, constructing socially, culturallyand symbolically a place for LGBT politics and community. We focus on thesespatial politics and map new configurations of sexual citizenship and homonation-alism that lead to the formation of LGBT belonging and consequently to the cre-ation of nodes of resistance.

Theoretical framework: LGBT national belonging – sexualcitizenship and homonationalism

As an ‘incorporations regime’ (Soysal, 1994), citizenship is an ensemble of institu-tional practices and cultural norms which define groups’ and individuals’ belongingto a political collective. The theory that links citizenship to sexuality argues thatcitizenship has always been associated with heterosexuality (Richardson, 1998; Belland Binnie, 2000). Although citizenship represents unity and equality, in manycountries gays and lesbians are not eligible for equal civic rights as heterosexuals.In other neoliberal states, LGBT individuals’ citizenship has been perceived asunsettled since they are not inherently seen as part of the nation but are notunequivocally excluded from it either. Indeed, while not formally denied theright to vote or participate in politics, the power of LGBT individuals to exercisepolitical influence has been circumscribed (Cossman, 2010).

The concept of sexual citizenship is contested. Its contours mark sexualitybecoming part of citizenship and employing citizenship as a locus for sexual iden-tities and practices (Bell and Binnie, 2006). That is, the concept of sexual citizenshipcalls to extend citizenship to include the rights of LGBT individuals. Expansion ofsexual citizenship occurs both through juridical enfranchisement and via ‘symbolicincorporation into a national community’ (Seidman, 2001: 323, Richardson, 2000)in the public sphere. To achieve that, sexual citizenship entails changing hetero-normative cultural and social norms (such as family formations and the welfarestate’s organizing principles).

However, sexual citizenship does not only signify a struggle for inclusion but, ascritical scholars argue, it is also an attempt at normalization, discipline and thepromotion of gay commodification and marketization (Evans, 1993; Phelan, 2001).Cossman (2010) argues that what makes the struggle for sexual citizenship, which isbasically a struggle for inclusion and purification, particularly successful is that itdoes not fundamentally challenge hegemony. Similarly, Seidman asserts that ‘gayshave claimed not only to be normal, but to exhibit valued civil qualities such asdiscipline, rationality, respect for the law and family values, and national pride’(2001: 323). Normalization thus neutralizes sexual difference and renders it anexception that does not prove the rule, portraying LGBT individuals as ideal citi-zens, who exhibit national pride and normativity, replicating heteronormativity(Stychin, 2001).

The discursive and material spaces from which claims are articulated are keyissues regarding the production of ‘a modality of sexual citizenship that is priva-tized, de-radicalized, de-eroticized and confined in all senses of the word: kept in




place, policed, limited’ (Bell and Binnie, 2000: 3, original italics). Bell and Binnie(2004) conclude that sexual citizenship produces a particular kind of sexual space,to the exclusion of others.

Still, Weeks (1998) argues that making demands on a culture that denies you is aradical act in itself. Indeed, the demands for normalization of sexual citizenshipnever fully materialize, as apparent in queer subversion. Citizenship is clearly adisciplinary discourse and, accordingly, any desire to reiterate heterosexual citizen-ship is characterized both by struggles for belonging and subversion.

Here, we employ the concept of sexual citizenship precisely because of its dualmeaning – extending civic rights and a sense of belonging, on the one hand, andnormalizing LGBT identities and spaces, on the other – as both are pertinent to theanalysis of the Tel Aviv Gay-Center. To augment the critical approach of sexualcitizenship, we utilize Jasbir Puar’s (2013, 2007) concept of homonationalism,which should be understood not as an identity or a positionality but as a disciplin-ing ideology and regulatory regime within the structure of citizenship.Homonationalism is an assemblage of political, social and economic forces:

Homonationalism, thus, is not simply a synonym for gay racism, or another way to

mark how gay and lesbian identities became available to conservative political imagin-

aries; it is not another identity politics, not another way of distinguishing good queers

from bad queers, not an accusation, and not a position. It is rather a facet of modernity

and a historical shift marked by the entrance of (some) homosexual bodies as worthy of

protection by nation-states [. . .] Part of the increased recourse to domestication and

privatization of neoliberal economies and within queer communities, homonationalism

is fundamentally a deep critique of lesbian and gay liberal rights discourses and how

those rights discourses produce narratives of progress and modernity that continue to

accord some populations access to citizenship – cultural and legal – at the expense of

the delimitation and expulsion of other populations. (Puar, 2013: 337)

Homonationalism refers to dynamic binary processes of inclusion and exclusion.While specific groups are marked with the ‘correct’ belonging and are deemed legit-imate, others are distanced from the public sphere and deemed perverse. That is,inclusion inmainstream society also creates exclusion by ignoring inequality towardssections of the LGBT community. Moreover, LGBT subgroups who receive equalrights by adopting hegemonic ideology strengthen the legitimate belonging of LGBTindividuals to the nation. Expanding the nation’s boundaries and including LGBT,i.e. a deviant group, within it, portrays the state as tolerant and liberal while simul-taneously marking Others as intolerant, undemocratic and illiberal. This processalso legitimizes violent policies towards countries portrayed as less tolerant ofLGBT and other minorities than the homonationalism embracing state.

Zanghellini (2012: 358) warns that the imprecise use or overuse of homonation-alism as a master narrative may lead to ‘inappropriate rhetorical moves andinaccurate or unsubstantiated claims, and to project structural undercurrents ofracism onto certain texts or events, rather than unearthing such structures from

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them’. In the same vein, Ritchie (2014: 6) asserts that ‘Homonationalism hasmorphed from an argument about the tentative and incomplete incorporation ofsome (white/citizen) queers by the neoliberal nation-state in a specific time andplace [. . .] into a totalizing framework that depends on a dangerously simplisticconstruction of reality’. Yet Ritchie contends that it is the oversimplifications of theconcept of homonationalism which make it tenable, popular and to some extentuniversal. Taking these cautionary calls under consideration, we use the termhomonationalism in this article as a marker of concrete and situated power rela-tions describing ‘the complex and unpredictable ways space is organized, differenceis enforced, and some bodies in some places are allowed to move more freely thanothers’ (Ritchie, 2014: 17). Thus we unearth influential power structures in order todemonstrate the limits of national integration as a means to achieve LGBT rights.

In sum, while the concept of sexual citizenship is an effective tool to analyze theestablishment of the Gay-Center as a reflection of a dual process of inclusion andexclusion, homonationalism reveals these processes’ consequences on the broadersocial level. Building on Puar’s conceptualization, this article specifically focuses onthe formation of the Tel Aviv Gay-Center as an assemblage, a performance ofhomonational politics in the local Israeli arena.

Methodological note

This article, which focuses on the Tel Aviv Gay-Center, is based on a larger queerethnographic research study, exploring the politics of pride and shame in fourIsraeli LGBT spaces in central and peripheral areas, carried out by the firstauthor.4 The Tel Aviv part of the research included participant observations atthe Gay-Center that took place between October 2011 and October 2012, and 16open-ended interviews with the Gay-Center’s staff and key activists. The partici-pants can be roughly divided into two categories: having a peripheral, marginal orqueer perspective and having a central or hegemonic perspective. The decision tointerview both central activists and marginalized ones allowed us to study not onlyhow each of these perspectives is formulated but also the interactions between them.

The interviews, which took place from October 2011 to January 2012, lastedfrom two to five hours, were recorded, transcribed and transcriptions were sent tothe participants for approval. Although this is unusual, all participants gave writ-ten consent for the use of their real names in the article, as they are all well-knownlocal public figures, who wanted credit for their statements. Also, the activistLGBT community in Israel is small – most of the activists are acquainted andlikely meet often. Since almost all of the key local activists were interviewed,their statements are recognizable and there is no point in trying to disguise theirnames. The interviews were thematically analyzed, revealing main concepts andsubjects. The central analysis questions referred to the social assumptions concern-ing LGBT spaces, activism and affects as well as to the stability of spatial andaffective politics, manifestation of conflicts and power relations and the way theseare narrated, justified and maintained.




The fantasy – Centralization and belonging to the center

There is no doubt that the establishment of the Gay-Center was significant for theprocess of centralization and inclusion of the LGBT community in Tel Aviv andIsraeli society in general. Avi, a veteran leading activist, described the politics ofmutual interests between the community and the municipality, while expressing hisenthusiasm for the Gay-Center’s establishment:

Adir [an LGBT activist, senior official at the Tel Aviv Municipality] asked [for a space for

the gay community], the mayor said ‘Ok, we will arrange for a room in some municipal

building,’ [. . .] I think they gave it to him to silence him, it never occurred to them [how

successful the space would become . . .]. They said ‘give him this dump,’ he’ll shut up;

otherwise we’ll never get rid of him. You know they invested millions in the renovation

[. . .] During the renovation I would walk by every day [. . .] I said I need to see this, because

there’s no way that they could be investing municipal funds in the gay community.

In my eyes, the Gay-Center is nothing short of a miracle. People from all over the

world come to see this miracle. That the municipality invested millions on this build-

ing that is worth tens of millions [today] [. . .] We [the center’s director] and I met

several times, we hosted Huldai [the mayor], and he said to us: ‘Do you think that if I

had known that it would become this I would have given it to you? It never crossed

anyone’s mind.’ [. . .] Even the cafe, at the beginning, it was: ‘OK, we’ll bring two gays

and an espresso machine and they’ll serve coffee to few more gays.’ When they opened

300 people came. They themselves couldn’t believe it.

The big surprise Avi refers to highlights the changes the Tel Aviv LGBT commu-nity has gone through. At first, municipal officials understood they had to supportLGBT individuals and organizations and made minimal efforts to meet their obli-gation. The LGBT community, however, made the space prosper, signifying thecommunity’s rising political and economic power. No one foresaw the centraliza-tion of the Gay-Center and its success, which in turn deepened the centralization ofthe LGBT community. As Avi points out, this was a circular process, in which theLGBT space received positive and glamorous visibility, thus improving the LGBTposition and status in the public sphere. The link to the municipality was strength-ened and led to its endorsement of LGBT activists. Thus the center reinforcesLGBT attachment and belonging to Tel Aviv, simultaneously emphasizing themunicipality’s obligation to respond to activists’ demands.

Yoav, a city councilman from the opposition party, described the politics behindthe Gay-Center:

The person who runs the center today [. . .] is a municipal employee. They [he and his

deputy . . .] have the same kind of politics of the ‘Strong Community’. [It] means that

we’re already strong enough, that we no longer need to point out or emphasize the

margins [. . .] we don’t need to cry all the time that we’re discriminated against . . .But

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rather, we’re a source of pride for the city, we are a source of income for the city, [. . .]

love us, we bring in money for the city.

Though critical of this politics, Yoav’s description reflects a group of activists whoshare a perception of the Gay-Center’s role, ideology and activities. Using first-person plural, the broad and all encompassing ‘we’, his phrase: ‘we’re alreadystrong enough’, represents and symbolizes the entire community, not a specificgroup of gay men. Moreover, the word ‘already’ adds a temporal component: inthe past we were all weak, in the present we are no longer, the (entire) communitywent through an empowerment process.

One example of such processes is the formation of a new platform for LGBTNGOs. Nowadays, the offices of Tehila (parents of LGBT persons), IGY (NGO forLGBT youth), and Hoshen (an organization working in public schools to fightsexual and gender stereotypes) are right next to each other in the Gay-Center,leading to joint activities and collective fund raising. New economic, spatial andorganizational possibilities were realized which stabilized and enlarged these organ-izations. Mike, former chairman of the Aguda, emphasized that although theAguda has its own space in central Tel Aviv, it rented an additional office at theGay-Center, because: ‘in the atmosphere created by the foundation of the Center –that was the place to be.’

The large building enabled the extension of the centralization discourse andamplified the political, cultural and economic scope of activities. Eventually,LGBT individuals dominated an attractive and expansive space that draws hetero-sexuals as well, as Avi points out:

Now, what it does, which in my eyes is wonderful, is that it draws straight people. The

building and its activities are so amazing and magnificent that suddenly [. . .] we are

not AIDS . . . those who cannot be worked with and who should be sitting in some

dark hole somewhere. Today we have the nicest cafe in Tel Aviv.

This space illustrates LGBT success and locates it in a space exuding triumph,importance and high value (see Figure 1).

This perceptual change signals a change in values, marking the place as respect-able, a family and community space, a high culture public space and, contrary tocommon stereotypes about LGBT individuals, not one of erupting sexuality. Therespectability enables the Gay-Center to become ever more mainstream and estab-lish the ‘correct’ visibility – a foundation for belonging within the bounds ofnationality, the structuring of sexual citizenship and homonationalism.

Boundaries of LGBT belonging

Achieving a mainstream position is often accompanied by or even depends uponpractices of exclusion or marginalization, which reveal the inner workings of powerpolitics. Thus, even previously marginalized groups such as LGBT groups and




organizations develop exclusionary practices, based on demarcating clear bound-aries separating ‘inside’ from ‘outside’. Three such boundaries were identified at theGay-Center: power relations, sexuality boundaries and political boundaries.

Power relations at the Gay-Center

Reut, an activist who works with transgender women in various forms of prosti-tution, reveals the first type of boundary. She describes how the architecture of theGay-Center makes it difficult for the people she works with to belong:

I never felt comfortable there. I never felt like it was a home, never felt like I liked it

there. There was something very alienating and very imposing and spotless. [. . .] I

thought of all of those youth, who were queer and marginalized, that don’t pass . . .

[. . .] They felt anomalous there. [. . .] youth whose gender is not entirely clear, trans-

genders who work in prostitution – then the shame is double or tripled. [. . .] If they

had events at the center, they invited the youth from Beit Dror [a temporary safe

house for LGBT youth], and it was always clear that these are the youth from Beit

Dror. That we [i.e. marginalized queers] shouldn’t mix with the cream of the crop [i.e.

the ‘strong community’].

Reut describes disparate social groups, distinguished by their ability to enterthe center and feel comfortable there. Thus exposed is the center’s reproductionof both gender/sexual and class hierarchies within the LGBT community.However, these class hierarchies are most often ignored in the Gay-Center’sdiscourse. For example, economic marginalization is enmeshed in the exclusionand inclusion mechanisms and thus plays a part in the production of the powerstructure.

Taylor (2011: 180) highlights the importance of class to spatiality and sexuality:‘Class, as with sexualities, is geographically produced and privilege, as well asmarginalization, needs to be explored.’ Although Seidman (2011: 38) disagreesand suggests that ‘class has not been a central axis of difference and division inpost-Stonewall queer life’,5 we find class and the stratification it causes to be animportant aspect of the Gay-Center becoming a homonational space.

Class differences and divisions are apparent throughout the discourse surround-ing the spatiality of the Gay-Center. Clearly, the exclusion/inclusion mechanisms ofthe center leave out lower-class LGBT individuals, as articulated by Reut, whoemphasizes class differences (‘the cream of the crop’). Pointing to transgenders inprostitution as an example of those uncomfortable within the Gay-Center, sheportrays the center as one designed solely for privileged LGBT individuals.

The cafe at the entrance to the center serves as an illustration of these classorientations, as it is not a locally operated low-cost service and disciplines thenormative behavior of its clientele. Gila Goldstein, a well-known transgender pros-titute and actress, who was awarded the ‘sweetheart of the community’ award in2003, is known for her extrovert and vulgar attitude. Gila is prohibited by the Gay-

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Center’s cafe manager from entering the cafe, with the excuse that ‘she cannotbehave herself’, thus excluding the uncultivated woman from the quiet and politespace of the cafe, and ‘preventing’ her from ruining the atmosphere (and the profit).

Shiri, a bisexual activist, describes economic boundaries constructed by the Gay-Center’s administration:

From the beginning I was treated rather disrespectfully [at the Gay-Center]. I

requested the admission fee [for the bisexual activities] to be 10 NIS or a sliding

scale fee [. . .]. They [the Gay-Center’s staff] disagreed and insisted the fee would be

20 NIS, which is the Gay-Center’s fee for all activities. They claim that bisexuals are

not a disadvantaged group. [. . .] In the two years that the activities were at the Gay-

Center, people always complained that it was expensive and that they couldn’t afford

20 NIS at the entrance. Eventually people just stopped participating.

According to Shiri, class boundaries are constructed and maintained by an eco-nomic boundary ratified by the center’s staff. Minimizing bisexuals’ participationand presence at the Gay-Center maintains a homonormative bourgeoisie andorchestrates a strong community voice. Leaving out poorer LGBT individuals,the spatiality of the strong community is also produced through the maintenanceof class boundaries, preserving the center as a middle-upper class space with a(homo)normative neoliberal agenda.6

By describing how boundaries overlapped and crossed momentarily on the nightof the Bar-Noar shooting, Reut reveals the way power is manifested in space,focusing on questions such as where, how and by whom decisions are taken:

The night of the murder the Gay-Center’s director [. . .] was in Denmark. [. . .] I came

to the Gay-Center and said: ‘OK, is there an office here? I need a telephone.

Wonderful, the director is abroad.’ I sat in his office and then a few representatives

arrived, little by little they saw that I was beginning [to manage], I had started an opinion

piece and we started to make phone calls, tours, press releases. The press arrived and

youth arrived and I’m doing all this from the director’s chair. A ton of volunteers came,

the center was packed. [. . .] Before there was any formal response, there were 24 hours

where he was in Denmark and his chair was free. I remember that even one of my exes

came [. . .] and said to me: ‘How can I help?’ I told her: ‘Can you maybe just make me a

cup of coffee?’ She made me coffee. I said this looks really bad . . . I’m in the director’s

chair and she’s making me coffee. [. . .] I knew that he was returning and with that the

story would end [. . .] it’s also high up, on the third floor, that’s significant. [. . .] from the

moment he returned to Israel of course I was thrown out of there and I couldn’t be there.

[. . .] And then essentially, I didmywork from the outside, I went aroundwith the ELEM,

[an organization that gives assistance to youth at risk] outreach van. [. . .] from the

moment he returned to claim his seat, I went to work in the street.

Usually, the presence of the Gay-Center’s (male) director prevents Reut frombelonging and acting within the center, compelling her to work in grassroots




organizations on the outside. The circumstances of the night of the shooting,and the absence of the Gay-Center’s director, enabled her to cross powerboundaries and take charge of the situation, without abandoning her criticaland reflexive point of view. Her perspective reveals the performance of authority(asking someone to make her coffee); how the construction of space shapessocial relations (the director’s office located on the top floor, overlooking thepark); and the many possibilities that open up merely from occupying the dir-ector’s chair.

Baruch, the chair of Six Colors, a group that offers an alternative to theGay-Center’s implicit ‘strong community’ politics, recounts another example ofexclusion. Baruch describes how boundaries are concretely structured within theGay-Center:

There was a room in the local community center that Six Colors rented, but they

changed the locks and they didn’t give me the new key and I had to ask for it every

time, as opposed to other organizations. [. . .] After that we were told that we couldn’t

continue to rent the room because we needed insurance coverage for our activities [. . .].

It was as if we were expelled from the Gay Community Center [. . .]. I wrote a rather

harsh post [on Facebook] about how, in my opinion, the Gay-Center is not the Gay-

Center, it’s the local community center and whoever calls it the Gay-Center is doing a

disservice to the community and there are people who are paying the price for this

linguistic change; primarily people who don’t live close to the center or people in the

periphery. [. . .] 12 hours after I posted the blog I got an Email from the Gay-Center’s

director: ‘Under no circumstances can you be housed in the Gay-Center’.

Baruch maintained that he and his organization were excluded from the Gay-Center since they did not identify with the centralization narrative that thecenter endorses. Evidently, the organization was punished for not accepting thepresumption of the center to represent the wide and diverse community.

Enforcing normative LGBT sexuality

A second type of boundary is created when the ‘management’ tries to associate theGay-Center with a clean, normative sexuality. Heteronormative discourses sym-bolically frame the public space as asexual, where sexuality is moderated or nor-malized. As a result, queer spaces are constructed as hyper-sexual (Berlant andWarner, 1998). Outlining sexuality as a contingent site of negotiation, queer theoryhas offered a critical perspective, focusing on the subversive potential of queersexuality and performances in the public sphere (Butler, 1993). Moreover, muchof the research concerning sexuality and sex in public spaces centers on safety,visibility and the private-public division (see Dangerous Bedfellows, 1996;Berlant and Warner, 1998; Delany, 1999; Bell and Binnie, 2004). The politics ofthe Gay-Center, on the contrary, does not involve sexuality per se but rather isanchored in the discourse of sexual (in)visibility and normative imperatives. This

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kind of politics attempts to consolidate a normative visibility, regulating sex andproducing homonormative formations of space that exclude sexual expressions.7

In order to accentuate LGBT identity and not sexuality, the Gay-Center limitsthe sexual performativity that it allows within the space. Pnina, a queer BDSMactivist, says:

I wanted to do the BDSM stand [before the pride parade]. [. . .] I requested permission

from the director and he told me no. That there was no place for it, [. . .] that everyone

is free to march, but only organizations that work with the Gay-Center get stands, and

at first I didn’t understand the meaning of this response. I wrote to him: ‘What do you

mean?’ And then he told me something like: ‘The Gay-Center is about more than just

sexuality.’

Since sexuality is often perceived as shameful – not appropriate for the publicsphere – the Gay-Center limits performances of sexuality to portray itself as rep-resentative of an LGBT identity that is clean and respectable (Berlant and Warner1998; Rubin 1984), and, moreover, as a family-oriented, normative space. AsWagner (2013) shows, mobility and/or presence in the public sphere is alwayslinked to notions of sexual (in)visibility in multiple and complicated ways.Eventually, Pnina managed to put up the BDSM stand but the director’s reactionmade it clear that, in his opinion, ostentatious sexual performances hinder central-ization processes.

In the same vein, Gal Uchovsky, a well-known media personality and a leadinggay activist, called on a popular website for holding a ‘serious discussion about theexaggerated sexual promiscuity’ within the LGBT community (Uchovsky, 2013:para.7) and thus reestablished the identification of the community with normativeLGBT identity.

These spatial norms shape the boundaries of power and influence, define whocan wield power and who will be excluded. Such divisions serve the third andprobably the most crucial type of boundaries, the political boundaries that produceand reproduce homonational discourses at the Gay-Center.

Maintaining political boundaries

The process of homonationalism is vividly demonstrated through the pol-itics underlying Tel Aviv’s multiple pride parades. In June 2010, three pride par-ades took place. The municipal parade, the largest annual parade in Israel,which has been running since 1998 (see Figure 4); the radical parade, nicknamed‘Just Before Pride: Alternative Radical Queer March’ (see Figure 3); and ‘TheCommunity Parade’ (see Figure 2), which protested against the municipality’sdictation of the central parade’s agenda.

On the night between 30 and 31 May 2010, ten days before the Tel Aviv prideparade, the Israeli military (IDF) intercepted six Turkish ships bound for Gaza.Boarding the sixth, the Mavi-Marmara, resulted in a violent confrontation between




IDF soldiers and the ship’s passengers. This event intensified the politicization ofthe parades. Radical LGBT groups condemned the IDF’s violent attack on peaceactivists. In response, a key figure in the Gay-Center wrote on his Facebook page:‘The radicals are going to come with the Turkish flag and take over the parade, wemust stop them.’ To ensure a visible Zionist presence at the municipal parade,Israeli flags and rainbow flags with a Star of David, the ultimate symbol ofZionism, were distributed. The day of the parades, the ‘radical parade’ marchedon a parallel street, prior to the municipal parade. Activists carried rainbow flags

Figure 3. The radical parade: ‘Just Before Pride: Alternative Radical Queer March’

(photograph: Aviv Maoz).

Figure 2. The community parade (photograph: Adi Moreno).

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and Turkish and Palestinian flags in visible opposition to the IDF’s actions andmainstream LGBT homonational politics.

It is important to note that there has always been internal criticism of bringingnational, economic or environmental politics into the LGBT discourse, whose solepurpose, many perceive, is to advance LGBT rights (for elaboration on this dis-sociation of LGBT issues from ‘the conflict’, i.e. political issues, see Ritchie, 2010:561; 2014: 11). The radical parade intensified this debate and some alleged it under-mined the national legitimacy of the LGBT community.

In 2012 the municipality launched a pride campaign entitled ‘The WholeCountry is Covered in Flags’ (quoting a famous line from a children’sIndependence Day song), which purposely sought to represent all factions of theLGBT community, not just gay men (see Figure 5). The intention behind the mottowas explained in an article in City Mouse, a local newspaper: ‘Although the mainparade is in Tel Aviv, pride is found throughout the land’ (Erlich, 2012: para.3).The campaign’s title reflects a two-fold desire for general representation, expressedin both identity and space: representation of the whole community and represen-tation of all of Israel. Tel Aviv is presented as the Israeli LGBT center from whichpride is dispersed to all Israeli LGBT people, who all come together to march in theTel Aviv parade.

The campaign’s linkage between sexual and national identity was implied byassociating the rainbow flag with national symbols – the Israeli flag andIndependence Day. This connection was legitimated by seemingly casual picturesof LGBT people as fun, successful, family-oriented, monogamous and normative.The images, perceived as socially and nationally acceptable, served to create rigid

Figure 4. The Tel-Aviv municipal pride parade (photograph: Meir Jacob).8




boundaries of belonging, excluding those who did not fit the normative and thenational models.

There are many other examples how homonational practices shape the Gay-Center. A paradoxical example was when Al-Qaeda hacktivists crashed the Gay-Center’s website at the beginning of the Gaza War of 2012 (Zack, 2012). Thetargeting of an LGBT website by Al-Qaeda reveals, in an ironic way, the successof homonational efforts and LGBT national belonging.

One outcome of homonational processes is the proliferation of LGBT sectionsin most central political parties, including right-wing parties like BenjaminNetanyahu’s Likud party. This demonstrates both the expansion of sexual citizen-ship and the increase in LGBT political power and the normalization and central-ization of LGBT politics, which now not only reflects a desire to belong within thenational boundaries but also to work at its very center.

The Gay-Center, a safe space of acceptance and inclusion, created a new oppor-tunity that was not just manifested in belonging to the community or the city but bybelonging to the (Jewish) nation. The physical space located in Meir Park symbolizesTel Aviv Municipality’s recognition of LGBT people not just as part of the city orthe establishment but as equal citizens in the national Zionist project. The Gay-Center is presented as the ‘implementation’ of good citizenship, one which is notmarginalized and is in itself the performance of the LGBT belonging to the nation.

Figure 5. A poster from the 2012 Tel-Aviv pride campaign: ‘The Whole Country is Covered

in Flags’ (photograh: Ziv Sade, design: Imri Kalmann, production: Yoni Meisler. Originally pub-

lished by Tel Aviv Municipality and the Gay-Center. Reproduced with permission of the

designer and the photographer of the campaign).

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Concluding remarks

As we have shown, the Gay-Center’s establishment crystallized processesof belonging and specifically national belonging. In this case, the discourseof belonging focused not just on a place-space or home for the LGBT commu-nity but on civil rights, mainly the right to occupy urban space and forge aspatially-fixed LGBT visibility. Currently, the Gay-Center is the infrastructureunderpinning the LGBT community and the potential for LGBT success, pros-perity and growth both individually and organization-wise. It is perceived as aspace of convergence, the foundation stone through which LGBT belonging isformed.

We have argued that centralization processes of mainstreaming and integrationinto the establishment and its spatial formation accelerated the achievement ofsexual citizenship. The Gay-Center embodies municipal and state recognition ofLGBT individuals as citizens who not only belong but are equal in the nationalsense. It is a signifier of mainstream citizenship, a citizenship that is not merelysexual, intimate or private, but is an indication of homonationalism.

Expanding citizens’ rights and inclusion in the nation entails adopting propercitizenship and excluding those who are ‘not proper’. Two intertwined processes ofappropriation occurred: the LGBT community appropriated the urban space butwas in turn appropriated by both the city and the state to serve their own interests(see Gross, 2013). Hence, the acquisition of a space of its own served two goals: itgave the community positive visibility, expanded their urban citizenship and, at thesame time, associated the LGBT community with Tel Aviv, presenting it as theonly ‘right place’ for LGBT individuals and organizations.

This analysis highlights the importance of space for understanding homonation-alism as an assemblage. Since homonationalism is neither an identity nor a subjectposition, we focus the analysis on a specific space that reveals the mechanisms ofhegemony. Bell and Binnie claim that ‘how we conceive of and theorize ‘‘the city’’and city-spaces will have consequences for how we think through citizenship’(2004: 1808). The way LGBT individuals feel in the city reflects their belongingto the nation. Thus, in a sense, LGBT urban citizenship is a means for homona-tionalism. Urban citizenship becomes the easiest and, at times, only way to earnsexual citizenship, and those who are not there are ineligible in the same way tobelong to the city and the nation. As an indicator of homonationalism, space canelucidate the relations between LGBT individuals and the nation.

Browne and Bakshi (2013) and Misgav (2015) suggest a different analysis ofstate and LGBT activists’ relations. Browne and Bakshi (2013: 235) perceive thestate and its actors as ‘constantly becoming, spatially contingent assemblages’,leading to a situation where ‘cooption, deradicalisation and loss of activism arenot always, or necessarily, the result of working within and with the state’. Thepower structure is complex and can generate incoherence and flexibility, thusrevealing diverse possibilities of becoming for activists. Indeed, this diversity cre-ates enclaves of resistance within the Gay-Center, which encompasses radical-queer




and subversive activities and groups working to create autonomous niches withinthe municipally regulated space. The Gay-Center and its staff enabled limitedactivities that are not homonormative, such as several of the trans in the centeractivities (Misgav, forthcoming). Misgav (2015) argues that even though the (semi)hegemonic sides of the municipal gay representatives attempt to blur the powerdifferences between the center’s establishment and a radical queer group operatingwithin the center, thus framing the center as an inclusive and tolerant space, thereare obvious power differences between the two sides. Misgav argues that the dualityof the center’s management enables the space to facilitate and bolster (queer) activ-ism, while serving as a gatekeeper of this activism, maintaining the power structureand discursive normative frames.9

Hence, although there can be subversive spaces within the Gay-Center, theimperatives of homonationalism are here to stay. We described the beginning ofthe LGBT community’s amalgamation process into national-urban discourses.LGBT individuals’ inclusion within national boundaries is always accompaniedby an adoption of nationalistic discourse and continuous marking of internalboundaries of belonging. These boundaries signify who is a good homo-citizenand who is not. In Israel, national boundaries, sometimes manifested as genderor sexual power relations, tear the community apart. While in many Westerncountries the LGBT struggle revolves around familial homonormative discoursesvs. queer futures, in Israel all LGBT struggles are loaded with nationalistic mean-ings. The nationalistic essence of the struggle has become so ubiquitous that it iscamouflaged and almost hidden; however, there is no LGBT project that can bedivested, today, from nationalistic sentiments, be they for or against the state. Since2010, there are more and more national flags being posted at pride parades along-side the rainbow flags and commercial banners. This is not a one-time reaction to aspecific event; rather, the Israeli LGBT struggle for expanding civil rights is taintedby the national agenda and attendant practices.

Many things have changed in the dynamics of the LGBT community since theestablishment of the Gay-Center in Tel Aviv: some leaders left and others tooktheir place, some organizations have been revitalized and new organizations haveemerged (especially transgender organizations), but all of them have to face thetransformation of LGBT spaces into homonational ones.

Notes

1. This article is a part of a dissertation written at the Gender Studies Program, Bar-IlanUniversity, Israel.

2. For more details on the project see: The Aguda: http://tourism.glbt.org.il/en/; the projecton the municipality’s website: http://www.tel-aviv-gay-vibe.com/; and on Atraf, a gay

dating portal: http://telavivgayvibe.atraf.com/.3. Since the Tel Aviv Municipality does not provide data regarding gay tourism and the

campaign, the information is based on newspaper articles. See: Sade (2011) http://www.

ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4075141,00.html. It is hard to tell if this information is accu-rate or if it’s merely a construction of the capitalist- homonational alliance. For a

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discussion on the implications and confusion caused see Sivan (2011) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoav-sivan/confessions-of-a-pinkwash_b_1138412.html.

4. For more details regarding queer ethnography see Rooke (2010).

5. For further discussion of class and sexuality intersections see Taylor (2011) Sexualities14(1) special issue.

6. Another kind of division refers to national boundaries. Other than the Trans in the

Center activity on the BDS (see note number 8), the Gay-Center has never held anactivity for Palestinian LGBT citizens of Israel. Thus, there has not been any explicitmention of activities for or by Palestinian LGBT individuals at the Gay-Center. This

illustrates a formation of national/ethnic boundaries as well.7. For elaboration on the objection to sexuality in public city spaces in Tel Aviv and

specifically their heteronormative, assimilationist and domestication grammars seeHirsch (2005) and Gross (2013: 132–133).

8. [email protected]. Misgav’s (2015) discussion is focused on Trans in the Center activities such as a meeting

which criticized the inaccessibility of the Center, which highlighted the absence of an

elevator in a three floor building or the activity discussing BDS [Boycott, Divestment andSanctions], a global campaign to end the Israeli occupation and colonization ofPalestinian or Arab land, equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, and respect

for the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

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Gilly Hartal is a doctoral candidate in the Gender Studies Program at Bar IlanUniversity, Israel. Her dissertation concerns spatial political modes in LGBT activ-ists’ spaces. Focusing on power relations within LGBT activist organizations andspaces, her research maps the production of spatial belonging through discoursesof inclusion and exclusion in activist spaces along national, geographical and gen-dered trajectories. She is specifically interested in power relations within the IsraeliLGBT community, its embodiment and different manifestations in space; socialmovements; queer safe spaces; and gay tourism. Her latest publication is ‘ThePolitics of Holding – Home and LGBT Visibility in Contested Jerusalem’(Gender, Place & Culture, 2016).



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Orna Sasson-Levy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology andAnthropology and the Program in Gender Studies at Bar Ilan University, Israel.Her research and teaching interests include feminist theory, militarism and gender,gender and new social movements, and Israeli ethnicities. She has published injournals including Gender & Society, The Sociological Quarterly, SociologicalForum, and Signs. Her latest publication (with Edna Lomsky-Feder) is ‘Servingthe Army as Secretaries: Intersectionality, Social Contracts and SubjectiveExperience of Citizenship’ (British Journal of Sociology, 2015).

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Documents

Being [in] the center: Sexual citizenship and ... · Being [in] the center: Sexual citizenship and homonationalism at Tel Aviv’s Gay-Center1 In a demonstration protesting against